


And She Who Pivots the World

by InsominiacArrest



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Cold War, Espionage, F/F, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 04:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8041744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsominiacArrest/pseuds/InsominiacArrest
Summary: Set in 1947 after the war, Lapis is a soviet spy protecting an American turncoat, Peridot, as they try to uncover the secrets to nuclear warfare in Los Alamos based on this post





	1. She Who Pays Attention

**Author's Note:**

> this is...tentative, it's based on a tumblr post and I don't want to get it historically wrong so any suggestions are welcome! So, I am a history major and this is based on these articles:
> 
> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/spies-who-spilled-atomic-bomb-secrets-127922660/?no-ist  
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project#Oak_Ridge  
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Witches (comes in later)
> 
> Los Alamos was a US government scientific base that was part of the Manhattan project to create a super weapon before the Germans did. Long before WWII ended the Soviets were sending spies to infiltrate the British and American ranks, some westerners themselves turned to giving out secrets to the Soviets for ideological or other reasons.

_1947_

They chose her because she spoke English.

Well, they were all taught English, but only she could form words that curved and clipped their Slavic wings into English grunts. _Cute_. _Charming_. _This little Georgian girl._

So they chose her to understand the American’s sharp tongue, taste if they suspected anything as they bowed their heads and whispered, while every moment she expected them to blink.

She didn’t have to speak much of course, giggling would do, smiling would do, waiting for her charge to  _stop_ talking for once in her goddamn life would do.

Her charge. _Her liege_. The genius.

Lapis Lazuli Langley, the codename, the only name for as long as she was going to be there. She would follow the genius around like a dog and wait for her to do her only trick.

When she did it. If she did it.

It was a tentative process.

“Lazuli!” Lapis sits up straight, putting her book down and looking up. Peridot Holtz frowns at her and Lapis frowns back, Peridot jerks her head towards the door. “We’re done here.”

Lapis stuffed her book in her purse, The Littlest Prince could wait. “Find anything?” Lapis could always _make_ more time.

Peridot strutted towards the exit, “what do you think?” She snaps and keeps walking, Lapis shakes her head.

She trots after her, the night was as thick as a warm sweater, and Los Alamos spread out before them in dry pine trees and stout buildings that screamed ‘discretion attempt.’

Peridot stuffed her hands in her over sized slacks and hunched her shoulders over. Lapis straightened out her blue skirt and made sure her garter’s weren’t slipping.

“You know,” Lapis began slowly as she trailed the smaller woman, “it’s easter. We should show up to the easter dinner.” It was less of a suggestion than a hint that they couldn’t afford a label of ‘anti-social outsiders’ at that point.

Peridot just huffed, “There’s one more.”  
  
Lapis blinked, “That was the last key I snatched.” She asserted plainly.

Peridot’s eyes flash up at her, swarmy and arrogant, it makes her grind her teeth. “I know that.”  
  
She approached CMRR laboratory, Lapis keeps her eyes trained on the lit windows they pass and tried to tell Peridot they should look happy. Lost. Carefree. Maybe drunk this late at night wandering the grounds.

Lapis elbows her, Peridot ignores her prompts.

Lapis furrows her brow, the woman was short, bespectacled, _American_ , and Lapis could read her as well as a devil reads the scripture.

Peridot presents the door before her, Lapis raises an eyebrow. “This is where you work everyday.” She points out thickly.

Peridot shakes her head, “yes, but not everyone flashes me their notes whenever I want.”

Lapis holds herself taller, “well maybe if you made friends more easily.” She grumbled under her breath.

“Well,” Peridot puts her hands on her hips, “you’re the spy. Open it.”  
  
Lapis straight out glares at that point, she approaches the government facility with three locks and pair of eyes somewhere on them no doubt.

She sighs, and gestures for them to trot over to a small building by the road. Peridot tries to question her but Lapis just shushes the girl.

A light shines from inside the guard house and Lapis takes a deep breath.

“Excuse me.” She says in her honeyed tone, knocking twice on the window. The guard stuck his head out and she smiles as wide as she can. He has a double chin and scraggly look to his stubble. She uses her highest-pitch voice that obscured her open vowels and clipped W’s.

“Yes ma'am?” The guard says, wiping his mouth from the dinner someone had brought him for the holiday it seemed.

She smiles wider, “my friend left some of her notes in CMRR lab.” She makes a shrug and glances at Peridot who looks back like a wet cat. She didn’t make it easy.

The guard chews, “I see.” He glances between them. “I’m sure it can wait until the morning ladies.”

Ladies shook her head and giggled, “oh but you know scientists.” She leaned forward and whispered between them. “They have to have everything _now_. One of those genius bursts. So forgetful too!”

He chuckles at her as she flutters her eyelashes.

“Yes m’amm.” He sighs, “but it’s very late.”  
  
“We’ll be quick as bunnies!” She puts her hands out and almost hops.

The guard scratches his chin and shows his front teeth. “Maybe…” He reaches for his keys and Lapis fluffs her hair. “Alright. I can take you.”

  
“Oh no!” Lapis simpers, “don’t get up, please. We didn’t actually want to inconvenience you, it’s just a little trip for us.”  
  
He frowns, but she tilts her head and presents him with a vacant, empty stare.

“We don’t let staff wander around in there after dark, there’s dangerous things in there ladies.” He sat up in his booth and wags his finger at them.

Lapis manages not to bite it off. She laughs instead and crinkles her eyes, “more dangerous than you? I don’t believe it.” He was taken. “We’ll bring the keys right back too, promise.” She puts her pinky out. “And you can finish that nice meal Marlene brought- she put a lot of love into it.”  
  
He touched the top of his lips. “Marlene, she was very sweet about it.”

Lapis winks, “of course. Haven’t you heard?” Peridot clears her throat, obviously getting impatient. “She likes men with…” She searches, “experience. I can tell you about when we get back.”  
  
He nods, “well, it would be a shame to deny this ‘genius burst’ then. Don’t be long.”

Lapis snatches the keys and does a little hop. “And I’ll tell Marlene you enjoyed her meal.”  
  
“You will?” He lit up as she agrees and Peridot dragged her away. She waved, Peridot said incoherent things under her breath, one of them sounding like ‘bimbo.’

They practically run towards the CMRR door as they get farther from the guard booth. Peridot kept glancing at her, “how did you know all that?”

Lapis snorts, “I pay attention.”  
  
Peridot plugs the keys into the lock. “Whatever. You are something else.”  
  
Lapis tosses her head, “What did you expect? Moscow sent their best.” A lump was in her throat as she said it, she had promised them they had- she would prove it.  
  
Peridot blinks and then haltingly nods. “Yeah.” The door clicks open and they walk inside without looking at each other.

They jog down the hallways, on the lookout for any souls straying from Jesus’s holiday, or anyone on the lookout for _them_.

“This way.” Peridot leads her down the winding hallways and into a series of desks. “He never lets me see what he’s working on, but I know he has Oppenheimer’s ear.” Peridot says, mostly to herself it seemed.

Lapis uses one bobby pin to pry open this assistant’s desk drawer, Peridot immediately starts shuffling through the documents. Lapis gives her some room and makes her way to the door.

Lapis put’s hand to her garter belt with her gun, “be quick.” Her eyes survey the dim room: enclosed, windowless, inaccessible. She didn’t like this.

“Duh.” Peridot says bluntly and Lapis growls.

She shuffles through paper after paper, cursing under her breath as she went. Lapis leans on the doorframe and watches the hallway, “the guard will suspect something if we take too long.” She reminds her.

Peridot shakes her head, her loose bangs bobbin up and down, she doesn’t respond.

“No, no, no, this math is just blatantly wrong anyway.” Lapis leaned closer, it looked like nonsense.

Lapis counts the minutes, trying to keep track of how long was too long. “Peridot.” She calls, squeaking coming from a distance.

“Almost..” Peridot was mumbling, “this looks like. Yes.” She held up schematics, an oval, in three parts with labels for each sector. It was a bomb.

Lapis’s breath catches in her throat and her pulse marches in a parade of excitement, images flash before her eyes, honors, medals, meeting the great leader. Restoration.

Her mouth hangs open and something shakes inside her. She clenches her jaw and reminds herself she was professional and knew nothing was ever certain.

“Go then.”  
  
“I have to copy it.” She says clippishly and Lapis reluctantly nods. She had to copy it, they couldn’t whisk away top secret notes into the night on a Soviet hot air balloon. Not yet.

Peridot furiously, meticulously jots down line after line with scattered tiny notes on the side. “Ah, of course.” She murmurs to herself and Lapis’s head jerks. She hears footsteps.

“Peridot.” She hisses into the dark.

“These take time.” She says stubbornly and Lapis’s hand floats down to her handgun, it was going to be hard to talk their way out of breaking into someone else's office to document a bomb.

She holds her breath and counts the steps, 1, 2, 3, 4, a left, 5, a pause.

“You want to be executed? Traitors don’t see a lot of mercy in the middle of a new war.” She tries to emphasize the urgency of the situation.

“I am saving the world.” Peridot replies grimly and Lapis is a bit taken back. She had yet to ask the girl her motives, Lapis's superiors had simply assured her ‘she’s with us.’

Lapis gestures for her to be quick and Peridot’s hand never stops scribbling, footsteps echo, 6, 7, 8, Lapis fully takes out her gun by her side and points it at the floor.

“Hello?” A male voice.

“Done.” Peridot says lowly as if she wasn’t just casually shifting the world order with a pen stroke. Lapis grabs her wrist and starts to yank.

“We have to get out of her yankee.” She practically runs her off with her, Lapis steps out of her heels so they don’t click and they dodge behind a corner.

“Hello?”

Lapis exhales as they find a crevice to creep into to wait.

“Did someone leave a light on?”

Lapis digs her nails into the meat of her palm until it almost draws blood, _a_   _rookie mistake_.

Peridot glances at her with a frown and Lapis doesn’t meet her eye, she shepherds them in the opposite direction until they are quietly taking the side door back to the general campus. It’s late when they arrive. Easter dinner would be over.

Lapis exhales, adrenaline pumping in her veins like the song of Odysseus when he returned to Ithaca. Triumph. 

  
She glances at Peridot, “We did it.”  
  
Peridot opens her mouth to say something and then she just points at the guard house. “He’s not there.”

Lapis flinches and swallows, hard. “We don’t know anything yet.”

They wait anxiously, glancing at each other and Peridot stuffing the single piece of paper deeper into her loose button up shirt, the tie sticking out awkwardly. Lapis goes up to her and firmly pats down her front, Peridot pushes her away with a maroon blush.

“Jesus.” She backed up from Lapis’s hands, Lapis just rolls her eyes.

“Ladies.” Lapis and Peridot turn in sink towards the voice.

“Hi!” It was too high pitched, but Lapis dangled the keys. “We were just waiting for you.” She chirps with a grin and Peridot doesn’t even look up at him.  _Amateur_.

“Were you,” he looks them up and down, Lapis feels her stomach flip. “You didn’t find them?” He asks slowly.

“Yeah, Peri, this silly, found them, completely realized it’s not what she wanted and put ‘em back!” Lapis through her hands in the air. “No wonder assistants run from the hills from you.” Lapis slugs her in the shoulder and Peridot just snorts like a bull, her demeanor as terse as ever.

The guard eyes them and then nods, “whatever you need ladies, I’ll just take these back.” Lapis hands the keys over but her nerves are still frayed wires about to spark.

“Marlene says hi.” Lapis leans in, “did you want to hear?”  
  
He shakes his head and a thin smile crosses his lips, “Why don’t you head off to bed? Pretty gals like you need your beauty rest.”  
  
Lapis primps the ends of her hair, “of course!”

Lapis takes Peridots arm, “have a good night Russell.” She winks, “I’ll see you in the morning.”  
  
“Sure.” He returns and then pockets the keys with a firm pat.  
  
Lapis’s stomach drops as they walk and she hurries Peridot off to her private bunks- the ones she got for being one of the only female scientists as well as a pain in the ass to live with.

“What are you doing?” Peridot finally meets her eyes, like liquid poison in a bottle: green and bubbling.

“Spend the night watching your back and then getting out of here.” Lapis says through clenched teeth, then exhales. “We’re going to be heroes.”

Peridot looks up at the sky, “we’re going to do what has to be done.”

Lapis eyes her, they make it into Peridot’s room unscathed, for now. She hoped the guard would at least wait on his suspicions. All they needed was time.


	2. She Who Dreams

Lapis’s heart shook like a bird cage thrown into a washing machine, her knuckles bleaching against the handle of the machine gun and her eyes going wide.

The polikarpov trembled under her, heaving it’s way through the air on bruised lungs, Lapis bit her lip until the cut on it split open and she tried to yell over the engine.

“Ana!” She called, “Ana! There’s an outpost only a couple miles east, we just need to make it.”

  
Ana didn’t respond and Lapis considers leaving her station at the rear cockpit, she flips on some of her controls and they blink uselessly in the night, telling her all the same thing: disaster. Lapis curses whoever built the PO-2 without radios and reaches for the flare gun to tuck it into her belt.

“Ana!” The plane jerks forward and the nose tilts ground-ward like a string tied to it’s snout tugging it to earth, off into the dark and the woods and the melting snow.

Lapis scrambles to the front of the plane, trying to keep her footing against the bone splitting vibrations and squint her eyes through the gathering smoke. A figure slumped in the pilot's seat in front of her.

Lapis stumbles to the front and grabs onto Ana’s shoulder, a trickle of blood pooled from the girl's forehead and a matching imprint of gore was imprinted on the dashboard. Lapis finds her eyes, they were vacant castles built of stone, but moved nonetheless with her breaths coming out in ragged throbs.

Lapis moves her out of the seat quickly and grabs onto the steering. She pulls the plane up from the nose dive, but the top of a pine tree rakes the bottom of the PO-2 and Lapis can hear herself screaming along with the engines painful shrieks as they drop.

The plane glides clumsily ever lower and Lapis tenses for impact, the slurry of wet snow and mud rushing to meet the battered PO-2. The last thing Lapis lays her eyes on are the headlights of German jeeps blinking in the distance as she tries to remember how to say ‘get bent’ in German.

“Lapis!”

Lapis gasps and her hands grasp out into the night at nothing, her breaths heave and she clutches at her chest.

Her eyes blur and she rubs at them until the feelings comes back, “[what is it?]”  
  
Peridot’s face comes into view from the horizon, staring at her curiously as Lapis realizes she had responded in Georgian. She shakes her head and clears her throat, “what is it?

Peridot blinks, her frown as deep as a valley. “You were wheezing in your sleep. I thought maybe you could knock it off while the rest of us try to get away with treason.”

Lapis slumps down on the hardwood, Peridot stood in her thick wool pajamas and appeared as unchanging as the face of a mountain.

“No one is knocking down our door yet. My contact should provide train tickets in the morning to the coast.” Lapis looks away before slashing a grim smile, “And you know what they say. No one will suspect a woman.” Lapis had been using that for decades.

Peridot sat back down on her bed and examined her, “What were you dreaming about?”  
  
Lapis doesn’t meet her eye, “Eating syrniki again.”

“Come on.”

“I’m serious,” Lapis puts her hand over her heart, her gun shifting on her lap carelessly. “Desserts are important business.”

Peridot pushes her bangs back to reveal her twilight eyes, “Alright. How can I trust you if you only thing you tell me about is the desserts you wheeze at in the night?”  
  
Lapis shakes her head, “ _I’m_ not the turncoat here, you’re lucky I trust my superiors or else you’d be left here on your ass tonight with one less schematic.”  
  
Lapis watches as Peridot feels at the paper she appeared to still have tucked in her shirt. They sit silently for many minutes on end, Peridot once more on her bed and Lapis on the floor besides the door- on guard just case.

Peridot placed a thin white stick between her lips and lit it, sucking in the smoke as she seemed to examine the ceiling. Lapis considers telling her to know it off, they didn’t need anyone knowing they were awake at this hour.

“It was the war, wasn’t it?” Her voice cut through the air like glass against satin sheets.

Lapis wrinkled her nose, “How did you know? Taste testing syrniki was actually my job during the war- a little stressful during those years, but I made do.”  
  
“Oh of course, tasting for the tsar I assume?” Peridot bit back with equal sarcasm.

They glare at each other until Lapis bends her neck up and sighs, “Give me one of those.” She heaves herself to her feet and makes her way over to the bed, tentatively placing herself next to her. “This is so soft, that simply isn’t fair.” She complains as she bounces up and down.

She could Peridot give her an almost smile in the dark, “Here.” Peridot passes Lapis her cigarette from her hands, she hesitates.

“You know they call this an indirect kiss in my country.” She asserts before closing her lips around the butt of the stick and breathing in the tar thick scent.

“Really?” Peridot tilts her head curiously.

“No.” Lapis replies simply, Peridot puts her hand over her mouth and actually lets out a thin laugh, Lapis smiles into the next inhale.

“So,” Lapis settles herself in, “we are about to leave the world’s most secure lab and travel 40 hours back to Chicago, why are you trying to save the world little scientist?”

“What, you won’t answer my question, but will ask some of your own?”  
  
“Fine.” Lapis huffs and reclines against the wall in her bed, “It was about the war. Your turn.”  
  
Peridot shakes her head, but returns her rimmed-glasses to her face. “Did you know in grade school we used to play marbles. Everyone had a marble and they would try to lob them into this circle, and whoever blew the marble out of the circle got to keep it.”  
  
“Uh-huh.” Lapis scratched her stomach absently, “Am I the marble? Who is the marble here.”  
  
Peridot kicks her from the head board, “Anyway, one day one of the kids managed to shoot all the marbles out of the ring, he got every single last one of them and collected them in his pockets. The other kids almost had a riot, but the teacher intervened and stopped them from throttling him. He took all the marbles home with him.”  
  
“Am I the teacher? I once pretended to be a teacher, very boring, I can never have children.”  
  
Peridot snickered. “You are _not_ the teacher, and I’m not finished. At the end, he was taking them home the other kids ambushed him and they fell out of his pocket while he was McDuff’s bridge and they smashed on the concrete below.”

“And?” Lapis raised an eyebrow.

“ _And_ if someone had another marble they could have stopped him from taking all of them home and having the other kids target him and let him purposefully smash the things in retaliation. It’s a metaphor.”  
  
Lapis sniffed, “I would have beaten him at marbles.” Peridot groans and Lapis can’t help but chuckle to herself.

“You weren’t there. You didn’t see the test.” Lapsi sits still again as Peridot speaks, her green eyes hover down and to the left. Looking blurry and tense

“Oh.” Lapis leans over and puts out her cigarette on the bedside tray. “How was it?” She held her breath.

Peridot shook her head and touched her right eyebrow, “We’re created the world’s largest super weapon.” She whispers, “And there’s nothing to stop us from smashing the world to bits.”  
  
Lapis’s mouth hangs open, she slowly presses her hand to the front of Peridot’s shirt, feeling for the schematics tucked within. They crinkle and the girl predictably blushes deeply as like before.

“So,” Lapis smiles, “That’s why you’re saving the world then?” She threw her a bone and didn't mention that two people with marbles could accidentally smash them just as much as one.

Peridot roles her eyes, “Trying to, hopefully if someone else has the bomb they’ll be both too scared out of their guards of each other to use it.”

“To fear and security.” Lapis toasts her next cigarette in the air.

“To fear and security.” Peridot repeats back to her blackly and then grins like a cat in the sun, the dawn rising in the window behind her like a dream about to break. “Who’s Ana?”  
  
Lapis sighs, “A friend.” Lapis pauses and shifts her garters around, “You would have liked her. She played marbles too.”  
  
Peridot nods and plays with her fingers.

“She was a night witch.” Lapis continues dreamily and the cigarette was soggy and bitter between her lips as she bit it.

“Like you?”  
  
“I was more of a night necromancer.” Lapis joked and then hoisted herself upward to plant herself on the ground again. “They thought I was dead, and I came back.”

Peridot blinked and then followed her to her feet, “What does that mean?”

Lapis doesn’t meet her eye and turns her back to illustrate they were done there.  
  
“It means get dressed little scientist, we’re trying to get away with treason today.” Peridot tried to question her more, but Lapis flashed her the gun on her thigh and she turns red and looks away.

Peridot has Lapis face the wall she changes out of her wool one-piece and Lapis steps into her heels and gathers various items to inspect: tissue box, cookie tin, and vacuum cleaner bag. They pack very briefly and Lapis watches Peridot grit her teeth as her American passport shakes between her fingertips.

  
They were leaving that day.


End file.
